Miscellaneous and Useless Information

Humor

Last Wednesday, I joined Jon and friends to go see Avenue Q at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. In case you haven’t heard of it, think Sesame Street meets South Park. A case of humans and Muppet-style puppets work through their 20- and 30-something angst, and sing about love, purpose, and Internet porn. (These videos of the original Broadway cast and the London cast are good introductions.) It was absolutely hilarious, and I thank Jon for noticing it was coming to town and grabbing the tickets.

Unfortunately, Avenue Q has already played its last date in San Francisco, but if you’re happen to coincide with the rest of their national tour — or you live in New York or London — go see it!

Line Rider is a Flash-based game where a little guy goes sledding down the lines you draw on the screen. There are dozens of Line Rider videos online — some of the drawings get really elaborate. (Thanks to Bill Buxton.)

See Sacha Baron Cohen (of Ali G and Borat fame) like you’ve never seen him before: normal.

I was intrigued by the music in the TV commercial for “Gears of War,” an Xbox 360 game. The song is “Mad World,” sung by Gary Jules for the movie Donnie Darko. And it turns out that the song is originally by Tears for Fears.

Another melancholy song: “Missing” by Everything but the Girl is one of my favorite songs from the 90s.

So I got curious and did a Google search on “ride like the wind michael mcdonald”. And the third hit was an SCTV parody of Michael McDonald singing those lyrics (“such a long way to goooooooooooo…”) posted on YouTube. Really funny, and absolutely hilarious if you know who Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald are. If you don’t, well, you didn’t listen to enough yacht rock as a kid, did you?

You may have heard of Engrish.com, which showcases the bizarre ways English is often used to “look cool” in Japan and China. Well, two can play that game: Tian Tang was inspired by Engrish to set up Hanzi Smatter, which is dedicated to the bizarre ways Chinese characters are used to look cool in Western culture (especially tattoos, heh heh).

Jorge Cham did speak at Stanford after all, which was good for me since it made my drive a lot shorter (although I was prepared to drive up to Berkeley…). And his talk was one of the funniest I’ve ever been to. It was also packed; the Clark Center Auditorium was filled with guffawing grad students (along with a couple of brave professors and undergrads). Whenever he does his next speaking tour, I highly recommend it, especially for all you grad students and ex-grad students (however you became “ex”). [photos]

I'll take a day off if I have to: Jorge Cham, the creator of the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper, is speaking at UC Berkeley on May 4. (For a while, he was also tentatively scheduled to speak at Stanford the next day, but that just disappeared from his web site.) It's the Dilbert of graduate school. If you've never been a grad student, it may not be that funny. But if you have, it is absolutely hilarious. Go on, procrastinate! You can't resist…